Base-centric routing protocol for multihop cellular networks

This paper presents base-centric routing (BCR) protocol, which is designed for multihop cellular networks (MCNs) for wireless data communications. MCN, in which packets are multi-hopped to their destination, is hybrid of traditional single-hop cellular networks (SCNs) and ad-hoc networks architecture. Because the existing routing protocols designed for ad-hoc networks are not suitable for MCN, herein, a hybrid of table-driven and demand-driven protocols with base-centric computing is designed. The base tracks network topology by the table-driven method and can thus compute paths for MSs, constituting base-centric computing. When paths are needed by MSs, when is demand-driven, the path query messages are unicast to the base. If MSs do not obtain paths from the base, then path query messages will be flooded as in AODV. Simulation yields the following conclusions. The throughput of MCN increases as radio distance decreases and is higher than that of SCN. When the radio distance in MCN is the same as that in SCN, the throughput in MCN is about twice that in SCN. Moreover, the improvement can be by up to a factor of three when the radio distance in MCN is 1/4 of that in SCN. The hybrid protocol outperforms AODV because with base-centric computing, path query messages can be unicast to the base and the overhead is greatly reduced. Without mobility, UDP outperforms TCP. However, with mobility, TCP outperforms UDP.